Monthly Archives: October 2010

Few months ago, people got upset on FB privacy issues and some of them actually moved to Orkut. Few weeks ago, I re-enabled my Orkut account, and now I was just checking it. It’s so damn BUGGY. I know it’s not that used like FB, but I’ve heard it has a lot of users in Latin America, especially Brasil, and India. How can these people use this? The really annoying things I just discovered:– there’s a default photo album called “Album de Radu”, which is not even romanian, ..WTF?! ..and the buggy part is, it can’t be renamed. I mean, it can be, but if you refresh the page, it will have the same “Album de Radu” name…– randomly, links stop working, the main ones: home, profile, scraps.– and I was thinking, after they sort out these issues, and probably many more others, they should make some “import friends from FB”. This should be an easy way to spam everyone there into making an Orkut account.– and again, being Google and all that, there’s no contact e-mail for support, so, if you’re having problems, you better check forums, than actually receive some answer from Google.

I’m beginning to feel like Orkut is some kind of beta testing for an actual social network shit. I know they have a “BETA” in the icon of Orkut, but seriously, they’re testing this for too long. They should really add a working, less buggy version of Orkut, and then add features one by one, of course, with some TESTING FIRST, in a TESTING ENVIRONMENT, NOT live. And, like Buzz, it should have a way to connect sites to Orkut. Like, I’d like my friends on Orkut to see what I’m Buzz-ing about, what I post on Blogger, and so on. And Picasa Web and Picasa desktop should have a way to share pics from an album directly to Orkut, not the import thing you find here…I’m using the Linux desktop version of Picasa, and it should be nice to be able to share pics directly from it to Orkut, with or without posting them to Picasa Web Albums first.

[update #1]: Removing application: BUGGY! I’ve searched for a chess game, trying to find one I can play in orkut page, but I found some bullshit called “Crazy Chess Games Online”. So, it’s a crap, something like arcade games, and I wanna remove it. So, I went to “My applications” and clicked on “remove”, and a message saying “no more application” appears. Then, I go to my home page, and I see “applications (1)”…Guess what?! “Crazy Chess Games Online” is still there…damn!

[update #2]: So, I’m trying to edit the “About Radu” section in my profile and this is what Orkut says. “The content you”re posting looks like spam, so it”s being sent to the recipient”s spam folder.” , and I can’t save that text no matter what. Pfff…And no, still can’t get rid of that chess application. Hmm…I guess I better delete my account and let Google spam me whenever they thing Orkut could be a good alternative to that FB social network.

So, I’ve been asked at a UNIX test about block and character devices. I’ve done a lot of things on Linux, BSD, but this question was a complete stranger for me. And, if this is a complete stranger for somebody else, here’s the answer taken directly from Wikipedia:

Character devicesCharacter special files or character devices relate to devices through which the system transmits data one character at a time. These device nodes often serve for stream communication with devices such as mice, keyboards, virtual terminals, and serial modems, and usually do not support random access to data. In most implementations, character devices use unbuffered input and output routines. The system reads each character from the device immediately or writes each character to the device immediately.Block devicesBlock special files or block devices correspond to devices through which the system moves data in the form of blocks. These device nodes often represent addressable devices such as hard disks, CD-ROM drives, or memory-regions.Block devices often support random access and seeking, and generally use buffered input and output routines. The operating system allocates a data buffer to hold a single block each for input and output. When a program sends a request to read data from or to write data to the device, the system stores each character of that data in the appropriate buffer. When the buffer fills up, the appropriate operation takes place (data transfer) and the system clears the buffer.

Very simple answer, isn’t it?!

[update]: Damn, looks like I confused another answer too…about file descriptors. Again, taken from Wikipedia…In POSIX, a file descriptor is an integer, specifically of the C type int. There are 3 standard POSIX file descriptors which presumably every process (save perhaps a daemon) should expect to have:0 Standard Input (stdin)1 Standard Output (stdout)2 Standard Error (stderr)Generally, a file descriptor is an index for an entry in a kernel-resident data structure containing the details of all open files. In POSIX this data structure is called a file descriptor table, and each process has its own file descriptor table. The user application passes the abstract key to the kernel through a system call, and the kernel will access the file on behalf of the application, based on the key. The application itself cannot read or write the file descriptor table directly. In Unix-like systems, file descriptors can refer to files, directories, block or character devices (also called “special files”), sockets, FIFOs (also called named pipes), or unnamed pipes.